A solar flare can be 10 billion times more powerful than the sun’s. We think of our sun as powerful — and it is. But the scale of the universe is truly astonishing. Scientists have recently observed a solar flare (those huge jets of gas that erupt from a star’s surface) that is 10 billion times more than anything we’ve ever seen our sun produce (https://earthsky.org/space/solar-flare-10-billion-times-more-powerful-than-suns?). Good thing we’re far away.

Our galaxy is actually warped. The Milky Way has always been thought of as a flat spiral. But now astronomers have been able to produce a 3D map of our galaxy, and it’s warped and twisted. In fact, the further away from the center, the more twisted the shape becomes ( https://earthsky.org/space/milky-way-warped-twisted-study-cepheids? ). I guess it’s hard to figure out an object’s true shape when you’re part of it.

Of course, galaxies are the only objects that collide. Astronomers have found evidence of a collision between two planets of approximately our size. This was seen in a distant solar system, street address Kepler-107. This is a clue to how often these collisions occur, and thus how our own solar system may have formed (https://earthsky.org/space/2-colliding-exoplanets-kepler-107-system?).

And so the observing continues. I can’t wait to see what we learn about black holes.